THE BLOG

I’ve known Lauren for a good handful of years now, after photographing her for the first time shortly after her son, Landon was born. Lauren is a home, motherhood and fashion blogger who is amazingly candid and helpful when it comes to sharing her life and motherhood experience. Last summer Lauren reached out to me when she found out she was pregnant with her third child, because she knew she would be due in the winter and wanted to do a maternity shoot in the snow. She has previously used my best friend, Tiffany, to do her maternity portraits but because Tiffany was up in Maine and snow is unpredictable, she wanted to use someone local this time around. We’ve been patiently waiting for the right snowfall to come to shoot her in the snow against pine trees but, alas, the timing just never seemed to work out over the last month and her due date was fast approaching. We began talking about alternative options and she mentioned taking a few quick hots outside – maybe at the beach – while we waited for more snow to come. I asked her to go grab a shot of the beach near her house to see what it looked like with snow and upon seeing her quick videos and photo, I knew it would work. Being moms and business owners made scheduling this session such a task between finding sitters, etc. I threw out the crazy idea of shooting at sunrise, on one of the coldest weekends of the season to date and promised her that it would be worth it. She agreed and early one Sunday morning we made the freezing cold trek from our cars to the icy shore. The sun had just started peeking up over the horizon and was this stunning shade of hot pink that was a beautiful contrast to the blue tones of the snow and water.

There was something about the stillness of this shoot that was so refreshing, inspiring and beautiful. For me, it was the ability to photograph her maternity portraits before the rest of Connecticut was awake and buzzing around. We shot at an hour where most people were probably (and smartly) curled up by their fireplace with a cup of coffee. The beach was silent, save a few seagulls that bravely flew through the ice cold sky, and it was incredibly serene. For Lauren, there was something about how graceful she was carrying this baby. She’s a seasoned mom and knew what she was doing. Pregnancy suits her well. But I think there was also something special about knowing that this would likely be the last time she would have professional maternity portraits taken of her. That this baby would usher her into a new season of soon having her body back to herself after years of pregnancy and nursing, and a season where she not just gets to feed and cuddle infants through sleepless nights, but where she gets to nurture and raise a family after the values that she and her husband share. It was a special session all around, and when I got the film scans back they came out more dreamy than I ever could have imagined.